The annual joint meeting of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature convened in Denver, November 17—20. Some decline in attendance had been expected in light of September 11, and with an estimated post-meeting count of 7,800, it did fall about 6% below last year's 8,321 in Nashville (the 1999 meeting in Boston posted record attendance of 8,704).
This year, 155 exhibiting companies—including trade, church-owned and academic publishers—sold their wares at deep discounts to attending scholars, hoping to gain course adoptions, as well as to meet with authors and scout for new projects. There was general agreement that Denver's Colorado Convention Center, with easy access to the downtown hotels where attendees were housed, was a vast improvement on the isolated and overtaxed Opryland Hotel and Convention Center in Nashville.
Aside from the fact that every publisher had excavated its backlist for anything on Islam, there did not appear to be any dominant "big books" or outstanding trends this time. Overall, religion publishers appear to be holding their collective breath, waiting to see what comes next.
Harper San Francisco took an innovative approach at this year's meeting, enlisting the Boulder Bookstore to do its selling. HSF sales director Jeff Hobbs came up with the idea, telling PW, "I thought it would be great to let one of our good local customers share the benefits, and it also freed our staff to be able to walk around and see what other publishers are up to." Ilha Nation, special events sales rep for Boulder Bookstore, said she had rung up more than $6,000 in sales the first morning alone. Hobbs said he expects to make the arrangement an annual tradition.
At the Association of Theological Booksellers awards banquet on Friday evening, Eerdmans took the Publisher of the Year Award for the third straight time, also winning for Best Academic Book with The Depth of Riches by S. Mark Heim. Augsburg Fortress was also a two-time winner, receiving the award for Best General Interest Book for The Executed God (Fortress) by Mark Lewis Taylor, and the Best Children's Book award for Jesus, This Is Your Life (Augsburg), edited by Jeff Kunkel, in a tie with Griefwatch/ACTA's Tear Soup by Chuck DeKlyen and Pat Schwiebert, illustrated by Taylor Bills. Crossroad imprint Herder & Herder took the Book of the Year Award for Christian Hope and Christian Life by Rowan A. Greer.
On Sunday afternoon, a panel moderated by PW religion book review editor Jana Riess, cosponsored by PW and SBL, drew more than 100 attendees to hear about how they could use their advanced religion degrees to find work in publishing. The topic proved to be an attractive one for scholars struggling in the current academic job market, where full-time teaching positions are at a premium.
To head off potential tax problems for exhibitors at next year's meeting in Toronto, AAR has enlisted the services of Toronto-based Mendelssohn Customs & Transportation Services. Said Ralph Schwengers, Mendelssohn's director of sales and marketing for North America, "Because 95% of the buyers will be U.S. citizens, and because the goods are only being brought in for a short time, we can get them waivers on duties and taxes, essentially extending the U.S. border into Canada for the purposes of this convention." Mendelssohn's fee to the exhibitors will be based on a percentage of the value of the goods they bring in, although, said Schwengers, "we haven't yet determined what that will be."
